The competition between us was good: Inside KCs early sports radio battles

Publish date: 2024-06-06

Jason Whitlock’s third column after arriving in Kansas City landed like a nuclear bomb.

“You would’ve thought I had cursed out the mayor,” Whitlock said.

It was Thursday, Oct. 6, 1994, and Kansas and Kansas State were playing a football game that night on ESPN. Whitlock, who did not grow up in Kansas City or attend either school, poked fun at both schools with lines such as: “K-State fans, wear your Sunday best — jeans with fewer than two stains and a nice flannel shirt. … KU men, no scarfs or sweaters tied around your necks. Have a rugged look. Don’t shave and put on a pair of boots.”

Among the many readers when the Kansas City Star landed at their doorsteps was longtime Kansas City sports media personality Don Fortune, who hosted a radio show from 2 to 6 p.m. That afternoon, Fortune tore into Whitlock, who called in while driving to Lawrence to cover the game.

“I go, ‘Dude, what’s up with you, man? I’m just having a little fun,’” Whitlock said. “That really set the wheels in motion for there to be a sports talk radio war.”

Four years later, another lightning rod named Kevin Kietzman joined the city’s sports radio airwaves. Wanting to make a name for himself and his show, he, too, went after Fortune, even putting up billboards around the city that said, “Lose a Fortune.” Kietzman’s arrival marked the end of one battle and the beginning of another:

Whitlock vs. Kietzman.

“That was the golden age of sports radio in Kansas City,” said Frank Boal, a longtime Kansas City sports radio personality. “Period.”

Extreme confidence and competition is a nice formula for animosity. In the late 1990s, both qualities were on display. Whitlock and Kietzman had become Kansas City sports radio’s biggest players, and oddly enough, they worked for the same station: locally owned Sports Radio 810 WHB.

Whitlock hosted the morning show as a side hustle to his columnist role with the Star, where he built a name for himself going against the status quo. For instance, he once demanded the Royals host a giveaway following baseball’s 1994-95 strike. He also nicknamed then-Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson “King Carl.”

“He was great because he jabbed everybody in the eye,” Boal said. “He stabbed every person in the eye. He had a tremendous ego.”

Kietzman had left a job at Fox four years prior and built an audience in the afternoon slot. He broke stories such as former Missouri basketball coach Norm Stewart’s retirement. He organized a 5,000-plus-person walkout at Kauffman Stadium to pinpoint inequities in baseball’s finances. He ran an agent’s curse-filled teardown of Peterson live on the air.

Early on, the two shows fueled Sports Radio 810’s dominance, which Kietzman loved because he owned a portion of the station. Naturally, though, the successes and egos of Kietzman and Whitlock clashed.

“Generally, the problem in any situation I’ve ever dealt with with any of these guys is it’s usually a misunderstanding and miscommunication,” said Todd Leabo, who worked with both guys at 810. “People get mad and then they don’t talk about it, and then things fester up and boom. That’s how it goes.”

Each year, the station held the “Turkey Bowl,” a flag football game for charity held at Rockhurst High School. Whitlock’s morning show casually put together a team. Meanwhile, Kietzman drew up plans for weeks. It became a battleground. In one game, Whitlock threw an interception to Kietzman on the first play.

“It was freaking devastating for him,” Leabo said.

“I got so hammered that night,” Whitlock said, laughing.

“I’ll tell you what,” Kietzman said, “I was thrilled to beat his ass.”

In May 2003, the KC Star’s Wright Thompson detailed the conflict between Kietzman and Whitlock with an article on the front page of the sports section.

(Courtesy of Todd Leabo)

Both Kietzman and Whitlock were nominated for Kansas City’s sports radio personality of the year, highlighting their success. But inside the station’s walls, that success took a toll.

Thompson’s story described one instance in which legendary Royals star George Brett called in for Whitlock while Whitlock was on the air. Kietzman, though, was in the studio. He picked up the call, and Brett later joined his show.

“Whitlock was furious,” Thompson wrote. “He felt that Kietzman stole the call to get Brett to come on his show.”

Kietzman, who granted access to Thompson for the story, said he believed Whitlock orchestrated the piece.

“It was the first time I got stabbed in the back,” Kietzman said.

The real dagger in the relationship, from Whitlock’s perspective?

Whitlock worked alongside Steven St. John, now a co-host on 810’s “Border Patrol,” and “Magnificent Megan” Maciejowski, who was a Kansas grad. Kansas basketball was dominant as usual, so Whitlock wanted Maciejowski to cover tournament games.

Considering the station received only two credentials, Whitlock phoned the NCAA and asked for another. They granted it.

According to Whitlock, however, after Maciejowski got her credential, Kietzman called the NCAA and said, “Hey, you’ve credentialed a third person from our station. I’m just alerting you because we don’t want to be in violation of your policies.”

The NCAA then informed Maciejowski she could not get a credential.

“He just basically fucked her and me over for no reason,” Whitlock said.

“I don’t specifically remember that,” Kietzman said. “But I won’t deny it. If he says I did it, I probably did it.”

“Kietzman was so … I mean, he’d never admit this, but he was so intimidated by my credentials as a journalist,” Whitlock said. “Newspapers were really fucking powerful at that time. And he couldn’t compete, so he did a bunch of dirty shit to undercut me.”

Whitlock decided the best way to get back at Kietzman was to take him down. Fortunately, a company shared that same interest.

Seeing the success that the competition at 810 had fostered, Entercom — who owned KMBZ, the news-talk station that Fortune had been on — decided it also wanted to get into all sports in the Kansas City market. So they coaxed Whitlock into coming aboard, offering him the afternoon spot, and then launched a station of their own at 610, which had previously been a country music station.

Whitlock had a number of goals for his new afternoon show, but they all boiled down to one.

“Going at Kietzman was going to be great,” he said.

First, Whitlock had to announce the move. He wrote a column on June 22, 2003, which included this shot at the past: “It wasn’t that long ago that Don Fortune was the king of sports talk in Kansas City. Back then a host could be totally uninformed and a homer and still draw huge ratings.”

Entercom wanted the move to create as much juice as possible, so before 610 launched, they had Whitlock announce the company’s plans on the show Soren Petro hosted at KMBZ.

Petro and Whitlock had gone toe to toe in the months prior on the air. The Star had previously published a story about Kietzman trying to coax Whitlock into hiring Petro for his show at 810.

“Petro is no different than Don Fortune,” Whitlock said in the story. “Boring guys with bad ratings.”

Petro shot back, “I don’t need to be weighed down by any extra baggage.”

On the day of the announcement, Petro sat there as Whitlock, a man who had just joined the crew, became the star of the stage. Petro fumed.

“Jason comes on, like, ‘Don’s a clown, and everybody knows it,’” Petro said. “He was taking shots at Kevin about rumors. And I was just like, ‘All right, whatever.’”

In his first few weeks hosting the afternoon show at 610, Whitlock took numerous shots at Kietzman, not the least of which was this one: “You have a former high school yell leader trying to undermine and pick on three former football players,” Whitlock said, referring to himself and former Kansas City Chiefs players Bill Maas and Tim Grunhard, who joined him at 610.

The Star later reported Kietzman’s odd eruptions on air with this quote from Whitlock, “This guy, over the last three or four days, has been melting down.”

Kietzman responded, “I find it unbelievable that a so-called journalist remains employed when he says my version of the truth isn’t always accurate, but it is my version of the truth.”

The beef, of course, continued for months. In February 2004, The Star reported that Whitlock nearly drew even with Kietzman in the ratings. But on March 2, Whitlock abruptly quit his show on the air because, as he recalled it, they would not give him a raise.

While he was explaining all of this on the air, one of the station’s executives cut the audio, grabbed his arm and walked him out. Whitlock has one regret.

“The biggest mistake I made in quitting was if I had finished out that last month,” he said. “I was going to beat Kietzman.”

He would go on to take shots at Kietzman in his column space at the Star before leaving Kansas City in 2007 for Fox Sports. He later went to ESPN in 2013 before returning in 2015 to Fox Sports, where he currently hosts “Speak For Yourself.”

“Jason was a handful,” Kietzman said recently. “I think he’d admit that. He might even take it as a compliment.”

Kietzman, on the other hand, continued to host his “Between The Lines” afternoon show until June 2019, when he came under fire for comments he made about Chiefs coach Andy Reid. Kietzman discussed Reid’s management of players’ off-field issues, and many listeners believed Kietzman made reference to Reid’s son Garrett, who died in 2012 at age 29 of a heroin overdose. Ultimately, after a lengthy apology, Kietzman and 810 Sports Radio WHB mutually agreed to part ways after 22 years.

Kietzman has not been on the radio since; Soren Petro now hosts the afternoon spot on 810 Sports radio.

But …

“I’m coming back,” Kietzman said. “Somehow, some way.”

“I’m not a huge Kevin Kietzman fan,” Whitlock said recently. “I don’t think much of him as a person with integrity. But I think the competition between us was good.”

He was talking not only in terms of himself but also in terms of Kansas City. The competition fueled two all-sports radio stations in a town in which the rivalry still exists.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of cities that were doing sports talk radio to the level we were,” Whitlock said. “I believe the little flyover city, Kansas City, had the best sports talk radio in the country. Because of those wars.”

(Top photo courtesy of Jason Whitlock)

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The competition between us was good: Inside KCs early sports radio battles